I didn’t think that the image below deserved Flickr status (that said, I think that the one of the cormorant probably shouldn’t be there either), but I still quite like it. So let’s preserve it for posterity right here.
Dassen Island sits about 9km off the coast at Yzerfontein. There’s not much there save for a lighthouse…
…a penguin colony and a lot of gannets, but a quick look at Google Maps does indicate a little infrastructure at the north end of the island – including that jetty.
And there’s even less to see at night. Because it’s dark, see?
However, if you grab the tripod, stick your short lens on, shelter your camera from the howling wind and time your longish exposure to pick out a flash from the 1.4Mcd light on the 29m tall tower, you can pick out all of the meagre detail: from that lighthouse in the south to the jetty lights in the north, through the evening heat haze. Like this:
Not amazing. But something different. And thinned. Thinned images are still very en vogue.
And that Dassen Island lighthouse characteristic?
Fl(2) W 30s – two white flashes every 30 seconds. I needed to know this so I could time my shot correctly, but when I looked it up, that setup rang a bell with me. And yes, a quick check confirmed that that is exactly the same characteristic as the Langness Lighthouse at Dreswick Point in the Isle of Man. It scares me that I recognised this.